Not That Kind of Extremists

It’s become a pattern: When politicians talk about “terrorism”, they don’t really mean all terrorism, but a specific subset of it. When the Senate holds a hearing on violent extremism, they also mean a very specific kind of violent extremism. Well, now it’s coming down to money as well. Earlier this year, news broke that President Trump wants to focus the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program solely on Muslims, and while the office has not been renamed the “Countering Islamic Extremism”, money does speak louder than words! He just dropped ‘Life After Hate,’ a group dedicated to de-radicalizing neo-Nazis and White supremacists, from CVE funding. The group was set to get $400,000 under President Obama’s proposal. Maybe White supremacists aren’t much of a threat anymore, you guess? Guess again: Politico reports Life After Hate “has seen a twenty-fold increase in requests for help since Election Day ‘from people looking to disengage or bystanders/family members looking for help from someone they know.’” But maybe potential victims of White supremacists will be relieved to know their attackers weren’t Muslim. There are other noteworthy changes to the list of fundees (not cutesy for “fundamentalists”, just recipients of funds), so check out the original list from January and the new one from today.